Flipside
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day one hundred and ninety-nine: After knowing how they had truly met, Will wonders how his life would have been if he'd seen Emma again back then...


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a second cycle, and then a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eigth cycle, and ninth cycle._

_Now comes the tenth cycle. And since that feels like it should be special, this is what I'm doing: Cycle 10 will feature my top 15 of some favorite things from Glee. Characters, ships, friends... It will be daily ficlets for numbers 15 down to 2, but number 1 will be a 7-chapter story :) Here we go!_  
_**Coming in at number six!**_

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**"Flipside"  
Will/Emma  
Sequel to "Precursor", "Memorabilia" and "Remember the Day"**

He hadn't been able to stop thinking about it since Emma had taken them on that field trip down memory lane at her old high school. He never would have imagined it, but there it was. It was like something out of an old romantic film. A random chance meeting, two young ones without names, pulled apart and reduced to a memory that would continue to mark the other throughout the years… Two adults meeting and making an instant and inexplicable connection, kept apart by circumstances until finally they had their way. And just when they couldn't be happier already, they discovered their connection ran that much deeper, that the young one without a name from their past had been right in front of them for over two years…

After Emma had revealed this to him, he wasn't the only one who continued thinking about it. Every now and then the two of them would see each other from across a room or hall, and they'd know they were thinking about it… they would smile… Beyond their thinking about how wonderfully odd it was, Will had another thought on his mind, a question.

What if there hadn't been that interlude? What if that night they had known the other's name, or still somehow they had found each other again shortly thereafter?

He remembered vaguely what he'd been feeling back then. He had a thing for April, but she barely knew he was alive. Then there was Terri, who seemed to like him, but he hadn't reciprocated those feelings just yet. The day they'd been over there and he'd met the mystery redhead, he'd finally felt like he knew what it was all supposed to feel like. But he'd left foolishly without asking her name and… well, he was fifteen. He hadn't yet understood how to fight for something like this. And with this new feeling in his heart, he'd opened himself up to Terri. And sure, for a number of years they had been happy, truly happy. Looking back sometimes he had no idea how he and Terri, as they had ended, were ever those two kids in high school.

But knowing how it had all ended did sadly taint those memories to a point. And now with this knowledge, of how he and Emma had almost been something, before he and Terri ever were anything, he had to think…

So in his head he'd put it like this: The foolish fifteen-year-old had turned to the mystery redhead, finder of lost things, and asked her name. She would smile and it would carry into her voice the way it did and she would say 'Emma.' He would say 'I'm Will.' Then he'd spend the ride back to Lima thinking about that ginger hair, that shy smile, those big eyes, and that name… Emma…

He'd bide his time and then that weekend he'd find a way to get his mother to drive him into that town, to that school… then he'd realize that this would not help because she would not be there. So if again he was determined rather than foolish, he would decide that skipping one day of school and taking however many buses he had to in order to get there would be worth whatever punishment Principal Henley, Mrs. Adler, and his parents saw fit to submit him to. He would see his plan as a fit one and he'd start planning his route.

The next morning, he would leave school like he was heading to McKinley, but really he was off to start his long ride to track down Emma. He was a good kid, just as minded on his studies as his Glee Club activities, so he'd counteract his defiance by studying on the buses. Finally he would get to the school, and his search would begin.

He would look through door windows, into the classrooms, scanning the rows for a girl with long red hair. She wouldn't be in any of those, not in his mind. No, much like their first meeting, she would see him before he ever saw her. She would call 'Will?' and he'd turn around… and that would be it.

They'd start dating… Well, they'd start calling each other. They'd see each other when they could. Her brother would drive her, his mother would drive him… She would never miss one of his shows, and that would always be something more to look forward to. He'd never be nervous, because he knew she was out there somewhere.

And then finally they would graduate high school, and they would go to college together. He would wonder what to go into and she would wrestle out that secret wish in him, convince him to follow his music. And so he would. College would be a time in his life he would forever cherish as having been the stage to his falling that much more in love with her. And it would all be sealed with a marriage proposal shortly before graduation.

He'd give her the wedding she'd no doubt dreamed of since she was a little girl, fantasizing… He knew that much from their turn in the wedding dress shop and their 'trippy' dance lesson. They would have their very own dance; it would be all theirs…

He had to think they would then… they could have had a child… if not two. That idea right there would deviate this re-imagined life story as he would ponder these supposed children. Would they have a little girl with Emma's red hair, or a boy with his curls… or maybe the other way around, or even both at once?

Getting back into the continuum of this new life, it would usually lead him to thinking about whether this would end up leading him down a path that did not end with him teaching those twelve kids in New Directions. He liked to think if he'd continued with his music in college, he could have ended up on stage somewhere… Broadway, maybe. But hey, if this was his dreamed up life, then he could do whatever he wanted with it, right? So it went…

He would imagine going to Broadway, doing a few shows so long as he didn't miss out on Emma and the potential curly gingers… They would matter too much to risk it. True to her and lining up with his master plan, she would still be the guidance counsellor at McKinley and one night she would tell him how the Glee Club's director had been fired, leaving the club a ship without a captain. He would find that same sort of thumping in his heart as he had in the cafeteria… and he would make a decision. He would take over McKinley High's Glee Club…

It was a beautiful life, yes… but he knew there was no guarantee that would all have happened. He chose to believe that it could have happened, but the way he would see it in the end… He could deal with the period in between because they had found their way to one another.

He could imagine as many scenarios as he wanted, that was all it would ever be. So he could choose to dwell on the what-ifs and maybes, or he could look to the future, and he could be happy with his mystery-solved girl. They could still have that wedding, that dance, those curly gingers…

If they did, he could tell them about their real life fairytale, about the night where they had met and how they had found each other again… It made the truth just as good as the fantasy.

THE END


End file.
